Perhaps the most pleasing aspect to this book, therefore, is that the contributors have used their own freedom of expression to defend the free speech rights of others. It is a positive and creative response to a moment of destruction, and should give us cause for hope.

Protest is increasingly going digital. Whether it is using the internet to organise and report physical acts of protest, using online space as a platform on which to take action, or targeting online infrastructure itself: across the world, people are taking their right to protest online.

As the Badawi case has shown, dissent in Saudi Arabia, as in many countries in the Middle East, is brutally suppressed. Yet Saudi Arabia is in fact a signatory to the Arab Charter on Human Rights in 2009, a document that guarantees the right to freedom of expression. Campaigners are asking Saudi Arabia to adhere to the standards it has set for itself.

There is a growing problem in politics today. In both the left and the right there are those so self-righteous they will either refuse to engage in debate or try and prevent you from doing so. Often these are important causes that get hijacked by this oppressive minority.

As this government takes its first tentative steps into the light, like a cute little faun that believes in cackhanded anti-constitutional remedies to specific problems, it has made its first priority clear. Getting all the stuff the Lib Dems stopped back in motion again.

The arrogance of those staying away is breathtaking. PEN exists to speak out for writers who are persecuted and threatened. As Salman Rushdie said, he hopes no one ever goes after the writers staying away. Still, it is easier to piss on dead cartoonists than to stand up to ISIS who crucify and behead.

What the liberal-left is practicing here is a worse form of Islamophobia - the fear of offending Muslim extremists. And White writers assuming that all Muslims get offended by Hebdo's cartoons - as if there are no secular, sober and sane individuals and political movements in the so-called Muslim world - is also a form of racism.

Funny thing about grief is it hits you in waves; some days you can be tootling along quite happily then a smell, or a memory hits you, and yes this is quite embarrassing in public when you burst into tears.

So what can we do about Katie? Katie the failed "Apprentice", Katie the Met Office drop-out, Katie the shameless 'media-tart' - loathe her or hate her, you cannot deny that she is an assiduous placer of irons in her own particular fire.

The problem with the freedom of speech debate is not only that those who advocate it co-opt it for negative use, or that those who use it think that exercising freedom of speech and being deserving of being listened to are mutually exclusive, but is that invective and hateful language is moulded into common vernacular with the play of society's very own Get Out of Jail Free card.

These rules aren't instructions on how to be funny. They certainly won't stop anyone taking offence. These rules are, however, a statement of what I hope is a reasonably clear moral position which preserves the right to criticise and caricature in such a way that the ideals of a liberal society are still upheld.

We cannot stop being alive, we cannot stop noticing the harm religious extremism and hatred causes. We will point out what fundamentalists are trying to do. We will show the limits they try to impose. We will show how people give tacit let alone explicit support to those that wish atheists, apostates and blasphemers dead.

You aren't being censored. The times when freedom of speech is restricted are remarkably rare and they exist for the greater good, rather than to stop you insulting whoever you like. It's probably correct that the police get involved when someone tries to post bacon through the door of a mosque, even if they claim to be exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Students by and large support the idea of a university being a place for the free exchange of ideas, and generally have a low opinion of the wackier preoccupations of their elected representatives. But this regrettable affair is a reminder of the shallow commitment that many students have to free expression.

The debate about the balance between the freedom to express opinions and the rights of those offended by them is by no means a new one. But though it's intensified since the attacks in Paris, it's doubtful that we're any closer to knowing whether and where the line can be drawn.

The articles of a thousand words, detailing what is wrong with Charlie Hebdo continue. A quick line or two condemn the murder of the cartoonists. Then the rest of the piece that in life they were out of order to satirise and lampoon religion and the religious.

In the last few weeks EU and US talks have resulted in calls for internet providers to create a means for 'swift reporting' and removal of material that aims to incite hatred and terror - a 'reporting' mechanism which could be used to stifle legitimate, albeit often highly distasteful or offensive, speech without due process safeguards.

Many posed the question; how can we have free speech in a tolerant, multi-cultural society? It is precisely because we want a tolerant, multi-cultural society that the right to free speech must be absolute.

Surely, we do not have to view them as a Hobson's choice? What we should focus on instead is the harder - and much harsher - question of whether we as followers of a religion or as advocates of free speech can coexist too?